The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong

by Suchen Christine Lim

  We lost touch with Mei. And it would be more than forty years before I knew the rest of her story. In the meantime my parents continued to row and bicker but they stayed together, and I suppose my brother and I were grateful for that. In an age when married couples with more money divorced like flies, our bickering parents hung in there. I would like to think they did it for our sakes. Perhaps it was my father who did it for our sakes. He smoked and drank but he did not leave us, and he kept his bus driver’s job till he retired.

  My brother was a gem; he grew up fast. Did well in school and got a scholarship to the polytechnic. I finished my A levels, worked for a few years, took the night school private university route, managed to acquire a degree in accountancy and got married.

  Today my parents are still living in Queenstown. My father drives a Comfort taxi part time these days, and Mother does some home sewing and baking when she’s not fussing over her grandchildren—my brother’s two boys and my two girls.

  Last year my father paid off all his debts. That was the first day he and Mother had gone out together since we’d left the house in Watten Estate, more than twenty years before. They had lived such angry separate lives that it seemed a miracle to me when Mother said she and Father were going to the Kuan Yin Temple in Waterloo Street to offer thanksgiving prayers.

  ‘And that was where I saw Mei,’ Mother reported when I dropped in for dinner. ‘I waved and waved and called out to her but she walked away. Very fast. Disappeared into the crowd outside the temple. Right or not, Pa?’

  She turned to my father but he was strangely reticent.

  ‘Mother, maybe she didn’t recognise you,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t be. I saw her looking at your pa and me.

  ‘Ah, well! She’s gone, she’s gone. Where’s my dinner? Eat! Let’s eat!’ Father stopped all talk about Mei. ‘Why bring up unhappy things on my happy day?’

  ‘Yes, Ma. Let’s celebrate!’

  My brother opened a bottle of cold beer and handed it to our father.

  ‘Come children! Sing “Happy Birthday” to Grandpa!’

  I watched the deep lines on my father’s face crinkle in a toothy smile. That day he promised his grandchildren that he would stop smoking.

  ‘Yeah! Three cheers for Grandpa!’

  ‘Humph! Let’s see how long that will last!’ Mother snorted.

  I almost snapped at her. She had a knack for putting my father down. She’d been browbeating him ever since he’d become a bankrupt. She held it against him. He had failed her. Failed us. And she would not let him forget it.

  In December James and I were at the wedding dinner of a colleague’s daughter at Mandarin Court. To my surprise I found us seated next to Anne Wong and her husband, George. Naturally I asked about Mei.

  ‘My brother divorced her years ago.’

  ‘Oh, how’s her daughter?’

  ‘Ming Li’s fine.’

  ‘Who’s she with? Father or mother?’

  ‘Neither. She’s overseas.’

  My husband tapped my hand. I stopped being so darn inquisitive. Other guests joined us at the table. Anne and George praised the shark’s fin soup, and we talked about the bride and groom.

  I didn’t tell my parents about bumping into Anne and George, but my curiosity was aroused. One evening after work I looked up the address of Bright & Clear. The shop had moved from its humble beginnings in South Bridge Road to The Orchard Grand. But to my dismay Anne and George had retired and the shop had changed hands.

  ‘More than two years now,’ the mother of the new proprietor said. She was a chatty woman in her sixties. ‘I come to the shop every day to help my son. Sit at home, so boring.’

  I asked if she knew the Wongs.

  ‘I knew Anne’s mother. She passed away some years ago.’

  I asked her if she knew Mei. There was a long pause.

  ‘Ah, the woman that the son brought home. That affair ended a long time ago. The son remarried. His wife is a doctor, I heard.’

  I asked about Mei’s daughter.

  ‘Actually Old Mrs Wong was very kind. She kept the child even though the little girl wasn’t her son’s. She brought up the little girl. Now what’s her name? Ming Li. Yes, that’s her name. Spoilt her rotten, but the girl’s quite smart. Now studying overseas, I hear.’

  ‘You mean Ming Li is not Mr Wong’s daughter?’

  ‘Aye, he was a naïve young man in those days. Believed everything that woman said. He should’ve asked her to go for tests before taking her home. If not for her later miscarriages and the blood tests and everything, he wouldn’t have known that the girl wasn’t his. When he found out,’ she dropped her voice, ‘aiyoh, he hit the woman so bad that she had to wear a cast for weeks. I’m not exaggerating. He broke her bones. And then, to cut a long story short, he kicked her out of the house. So Old Mrs Wong gave the woman a large sum of money. Actually, if you ask me, it was to buy the little girl. Had a lawyer make the woman sign an agreement. She’d to give up her little girl. Old Mrs Wong doted on the girl. Said the woman wouldn’t be a good mother to her.’

  I said I was sorry for Mei.

  ‘She brought it on herself. Cheated on so many fronts. Old Mrs Wong said the daughter could be her former landlord’s. Her landlord’s wife kept calling and asking for money. It was blackmail, I tell you. It was terrible. The landlord’s wife knew that the Wongs were rich. They’re still a very rich family today. The Wongs had to change their phone, and even moved house because of that.’

  I couldn’t sleep that night. My head was filled with all sorts of rubbish caught in a gale. I began to see my parents through new eyes.

  Whenever I visited them, Mei came to mind. That my father had women friends did not surprise me. What shocked me was my own imagination. I kept thinking of Mei’s bedroom with the dark maroon velvet curtains, satin bedsheets, the large mirrors and drawers stuffed with black, red and purple panties. And my father had gone in there.

  I glanced at him. His hair, styled in a crew cut, had turned completely white. He wore dentures. He was already seventy-eight. What right have I to probe into his past? Disturb his peace? Would my mother want to know what I know? Should I tell her? And would she benefit from my telling? What good would it do her?

  A part of me clung to the status quo. The other part sought knowledge and justice. I smelt the faint odour of exploitation somewhere. The truth was I was curious. But curiosity was not reason enough to destroy the truce that my parents had so painfully built between them. And so I dithered that whole year, and did nothing in the end.

  If Mother hadn’t found out that Fah Chay, our former amah, was in the home of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Thomson Road, I wouldn’t have thought about Mei again. We visited Fah Chay who was delighted to see us. She sat in a wheelchair, frail and thin but as chirpy as a sparrow.

  ‘And how are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Very blessed. They’re very good to me here.’

  Then she broke the news to us. Mei had hung herself.

  ‘Died alone in a rented room in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. Very sad. Died on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Couldn’t accept her son’s death. The boy had water in his brain. No cure. Five years old. She had him very late, you know. Very late in life.’

  Fah Chay’s cousin had worked for Mei in Kuala Lumpur. According to the cousin, Mei had gone there after she’d left Mr Wong. She used the money given to her to set herself up in Kuala Lumpur, and had returned to work in the nightclubs, first as a dance hostess then later as a mamasan, introducing women younger than herself to the nightclub’s male clientele. Then she’d met a businessman who’d eventually married her.

  ‘Grand wedding, ah! All paid for by her. Not the man. White wedding gown. Grand wedding feast. People said she was already over the hill. An old hen. More than forty years old and still wanted to wear white. But she didn’t care. She’d never married properly before. For once in her life she wanted a proper wedding, she said. In the living room of her house in Kuala Lump
ur, before she sold it, she hung a large wedding photo of herself and the groom. Boasted that she’d finally achieved what she’d always wanted—a husband and family. Then she suffered three miscarriages, one after the other. The son that was eventually born had a very large head. Full of water inside. The doctors said no cure. Poor Miss Mei. She brought the boy to Singapore hoping to find a cure here. Because of my cousin, I saw her a few times. Back and forth. Back and forth she travelled. Very sad. Visited so many temples. Even went to church again. Also no use. By then that man, her husband, had taken all her money. He travelled very often. ‘Sometimes gone for months,’ my cousin said. Then Miss Mei found out he already had a wife and family in Sabah. Then her boy died. She was all alone. The husband didn’t even come back for the funeral. The boy died a week before Chinese New Year. The husband didn’t come back for New Year. Mei hung herself on New Year’s Eve in a room she rented above the coffee shop. No one knew. On the third day her landlord broke down her door and discovered her body.’

  Mother was very quiet on the way home. So was I, for different reasons. I was very sorry that as a self-righteous fourteen year old I had once judged her as frivolous and lacking in morals when all she wanted was to marry and have a family.

  My father died in his sleep a few days before his eightieth birthday. According to Chinese tradition this called for celebration, not mourning. My father had lived to a ripe old age. His wake was held on the ground floor of their apartment block in Queenstown. On the second night, after our friends and relatives had left, I found Mother standing near my father’s casket, gazing down at his body. When she saw me she said, ‘There lies a rake.’

  ‘Ma!’ I was shocked.

  ‘I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Ask him. I’m saying it in front of him.’

  ‘Ma.’

  ‘He was a rake. I’m not lying or slandering him. What didn’t I suffer as his wife? He fooled around with women. I even had to bring one of his women home to live with us.’

  I gazed at my mother’s white hair, curled in a short frizzy perm. The lines around her eyes and lips followed the downward curve of her mouth. Why hadn’t she divorced him? I thought.

  ‘Was it Pak Mei?’ I asked her gently.

  ‘Who else? I knew what they were up to behind my back. I was no fool. But I treated her well. Never let on that I knew. I squeezed my heart and taped shut my mouth. I let our room to her so she could see him for what he is—a lazy, arrogant layabout. Not a cent in his pocket. He talked big only. So she married Mr Wong.’

  ‘Ma.’

  ‘To be fair to your father, he left his family for me. I never forgot that. His family was rich. Mine was dirt poor. But he left his family to marry me. And we stayed married. To the end.’

  I heard the note of pride in her voice, a woman’s pride—he had loved her first and last. By venting her anger at last, she was getting rid of the bitterness in between. I took my mother’s hand and squeezed it hard.

  ‘That is love, Ma.’

  Her thin frame shook in my arms. I held my seventy-six-year-old mother. I held her tight. She’s all I have. Pa’s gone. Did she love him? Did he love her? Does it matter now? What is love? Is it fidelity? The act of staying together till death do us part? In the end, everything must end in death and forgiveness. If not, how do we live?

  About the Author

  Born in Malaysia, Suchen Christine Lim grew up in Malaysia and Singapore. Awarded a Fulbright grant, she is a Fellow of the International Writers’ Programme at the University of Iowa, and is the first Singapore writer honoured as the university’s International Writer-in-Residence. In 2012 she received the Southeast Asia Write Award. In 1992, her novel, Fistful of Colours, won the inaugural Singapore Literature Prize, and in 2015 it was selected by The Sunday Times as one of the top 10 Singapore classic novels. Another novel, The River’s Song, was selected by Kirkus Reviews (USA) as one of “The 100 Best Books of 2015”. Other novels include Rice Bowl, Gift From The Gods, and A Bit of Earth, shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize.

  The Man who Wore his Wife’s Sarong is an updated and expanded edition of The Lies that Build a Marriage, which was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2008, featuring four additional stories.

  Individual story publication history

  Ah Nah: an Interpretation: First published in Westerly Vol 48 Nov 2003, Westerly Centre, University of Western Australia.

  Big Wall Newspaper in Reviewing Singapore, Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, Vol 10 number 1, 2010 pub. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, 2010.

  Christmas at Singapore Casket: First published in The Straits Times, 25 December 2004 as part of its traditional series of Yuletide stories. The story follows on from ‘…dead as a doornail’, the first paragraph of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

  Gloria in Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, pub International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM), Dec 2007.

  Mei Kwei, I Love You in Singapore Noir ed. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan pub. Akashic Books, New York, 2014 (Private Eye Writers Of America Shamus Award Finalist 2015).

  My Two Mothers: Commissioned for and first read at the International Women’s Day service at the Free Community Church, Singapore,

  5 March 2006.

  Retired Rebel: First published in Silverfish New Writing 3: An Anthology of stories from Malaysia, Singapore & Beyond: Silverfish, Kuala Lumpur, 2003.

  The Morning After: Commissioned by Free Community Church and read at its Christmas service, Arts House on 25 December 2005.

  The Tragedy of My Third Eye: First published in The Merlion & Hibiscus by Mukerjee, Dipika et al. (ed.): Penguin India, 2002.

  Usha and My Third Child: Commissioned for and first read at the Mother’s Day service, Kampong Kapor Methodist Church, Singapore, 14 May 2006.

  All other stories first published in The Lies that Build a Marriage: Monsoon Books & National Arts Council, Singapore, 2007.